Tag Archives: Afghanistan

The 2014 feature Good Kill drew significant critical praise for its up-to-the-moment depiction of modern warfare. In it, Ethan Hawke portrays a US Air Force fighter pilot who, as a result of defense-budget downsizing, now pilots Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles from a base Las Vegas. He struggles with the fact that he is not physically in the war zone, putting his own life at risk. Counter-intuitively, it can be more difficult to fight a war in the Middle East for a 12-hour-shift and then head home to the Vegas suburbs to join his wife and kids. As the story develops, he is assigned to fly missions for the CIA and his psychological strain increases to the breaking point.

I have a feeling that the glowing reviews from the major news outlets had more to do with the political message than with the film itself. While on its face the film may not be purely anti-war, we come to see that the “good” characters are the ones bothered by the direction taken in the war on terror whereas the pro-American messages are always from the more shallow, jingoistic characters.

The film opens up with a “based on real events” title card. I have seen (but not read) some stories about the emotional stress of fighting real war from a computer terminal a short commute from one’s house, so I am aware there is some basis. I also can’t say I know much, if anything, about the modern Air Force and its use of drones. My impression, though is… well, let’s just say I don’t think they had the cooperation of the Air Force in the making of this particular film.

My gut is backed up by the occasional online user review from someone who claims they do know a bit about the reality. For those who preface their comments with a claim to have been involved in Air Force operations, the sentiment seems to be universally negative. I suspect that for every obvious slip up (the list of goofs are many), there are many more that I won’t catch. While being accurate isn’t necessary to make a great film, inaccuracy and misrepresentation does weigh a film down. If nothing else, I get the sense that I’m being emotionally manipulated in being shown only what the creators want me to see; by things that are neither accurate nor representative.

Think about it with a counter-example. Instead of making a film where a moral and patriotic pilot is forced to obey unjust orders from an ethically bankrupt CIA, a different background could have packaged the same basic story. What if Hawke was tormented because he watched, from 7000 miles away, his fellow Americans being killed. What if he feels ineffective – forced by the Rules of Engagement to sit by as others die and, in particular, guilty because his is under no threat himself. The character arc could have been the same but, instead, we’d see a film more typical of the pro-war genre. Would it have been a better or worse film? I don’t know. Would it have received accolades from the New York Times and the Washington Post? I doubt it. I’m not even particularly pro-drone-strike, myself, but I don’t like being told I’m watching a story about a good soldier under stress while being tricked into watching a piece about why the U.S. use of drones is so evil.

As I’ve written so many times before in various other contexts, this wasn’t a bad film. In fact, it was decent. It did some things wrong and it did some things right. I just feel a little sad for it in that it missed the chance to be better. Maybe earning four stars out of five instead of three-and-a-half. I can’t find any production budget information, so I can’t tell if it made or lost money. Pulling in about $1.5 million, it doesn’t sound successful. Director Andrew Niccol once made the outstanding Lord of War which, although also “based on real events,” was clearly portraying them inaccurately. What a black comedy can get away with, perhaps, a slow, dark drama cannot. But I think part of the answer is I didn’t feel manipulated by the exaggerated story of Yuri Orlov because I knew it was exaggerated.

Just so the critiques don’t sound too one-sided politics-wise, I came across another review (which I can’t find now) that said something to the effect, “Sorry we bombed your country. Here’s a movie about how it made us feel bad.” I think left or right, you can be disappointed in the shallowness and the disingenuousness of this film.

As to the transplanting Lisa Bonet’s voice into Zoë Kravitz’s 25-year old body? My only response is Allāhu akbar.

I watched Restrepo six years ago, almost to the day. I found it to be an excellent documentary.

That title follows, over a one-year period of filming, one airborne unit on a 15 month deployment in one of the more hazardous regions of Afghanistan. At the beginning of the deployment, medic Private First Class Juan Restrepo is killed in a firefight. As the mission continues, the unit is tasked to create a new outpost deeper into uncontrolled territory, and the soldiers name the outpost Restrepo, in honor of their fallen comrade. The film also focuses on a later battle in which three Americans were killed and seven wounded. But the film also shows the day-to-day routine of the unit, and their thoughts on their deployment.

Following the critical and financial success of that film and the death of one if its producer/directors, the remaining director began work on a follow-up piece. I hadn’t known of this effort until Netflix decided to pull it from its streaming lineup, prompting me to give it a watch while I had the chance.

It is impossible (for me, at least) to view the film Korengal independently of the first. It was always intended as a companion piece. Also, consisting of documentary footage, it relied on the same set of material recorded for the first go around. Right away, this gives me a sense of disappointment. I’ve already been presented much of this stuff in a chronological narrative, and now here it is again organized topically. Is this really a fresh movie? One Netflix reviewer stated that the footage used to compose the second documentary was all actually already available on the bonus features of the DVD release. That’s not something I’m inclined to verify, but it does sound plausible.

It makes it difficult to give a thumbs up to something that feels recycled.

As far as the new format (topical rather than chronological) goes, it hits and it misses. Each topic mixes in-country footage and post-deployment interviews to different aspects of modern army life. Heroism, the ups-and-downs of a soldiers life, and everyone’s favorite gun are all discussed. Individual scenes can be very powerful. A soldier is questions about the one thing he’ll missing most about Afghanistan. He answers, “shooting people.”

If Korengal were the first (or perhaps the only) of the two films, how would I feel about it? It’s hard to unknow what has predispositioned me against the film, but I think if I would have come across this blind, I would have considered it a decent, but not exceptional documentary.

When this film came out, it got fairly negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. So despite, generally, going for most Bill Murray vehicles, I pretty much gave this a pass.

Fairly recently, some Facebook posts caused me to realize I have this distant connection to one of the actors. A friend of a friend has a medium-sized role in the movie. So this one went back into my Netflix queue, as it was available for streaming at the time.

But all streaming, it seems, must come to an end. So I decided to watch it before the opportunity was gone.

I like it.

Would I like it so much such low expectations going in? It does seem to be a big mix of Lost In Translation, War Dogs, Almost Famous, and more, with the occasional Caddyshack reference tossed in. If I were really looking for freshness, maybe this would have bothered me.

On the other hand, I generally like musician-centric movies, which this is. I also think that Hollywood does a good job with its self-referential dark comedies (I’m thinking, recently, of the likes of Birdman). In this case, Murray’s character is a rock tour agent who travels to Afghanistan to earn some money via a USO tour. As things start to go wrong, hilarity ensues.

Category-wise, it is also a big mix of different genres. Towards the end, the “comedy” designation of the film is retained mostly because Bill Murray is on-screen and, admit it, he’s pretty funny no matter what he is doing or saying. A little bit of everything is tossed into pot and stirred, coming up with something not very deep but pleasantly entertaining.

I would have expected a little more love for just this number of big names on the screen. I understand a lack of Oscar nominations. But this was the 5th worst performing film of all time, and the only one that did worse (and that I’ve even heard of) was Jem and the Holograms. It couldn’t really be that bad. It wasn’t.

The 9th Company 2005Kajaki: The True Story (Kilo Two Bravo) 2006Hyena Road 2010

Last night, I took in another foreign production about the war(s) in Afghanistan. This was my third over the last few months.

From the standpoint of an American, we tend to view our wars as American affairs. We also expect our war movies to be American affairs. It can be a little surprising to see a variation on these themes, but from a perspective outside our borders. But of course, the Afghanistan mission is an international one, with plenty of unique stories of soldiers from around the world. And well before American’s involvement, the Russians (Soviet Union) had their own experience in that country.

The three films I watched, I happen to watch in chronological order. All three are based on real events, although all three of course dramatize the story to at least some extent.

The first of the three is a Russian film called The 9th Company. It appear to attempt, at least in part, to tell an under-told story of veterans of that now distant war. Of the three films, this seems to be taking the most liberties with regard to actual events. However, it is not just a bit of patriotic propaganda. It is critical of the Soviet Army and of its mission in Afghanistan, and by extension, critical of the current Russian government. Nevertheless, it received not only a pass through any censorship, but seems to have used government funding in its production.

The film’s structure is one familiar to American audiences. We begin with a mix of recruits in a boot camp for an elite paratrooper unit. We follow them to a deployment in Afghanistan in the waning days of the Soviet involvement in that nation. During the withdrawal, the soldiers become isolated and attacked by Mujaheddin.

The film was very popular in Russia, and the story and production values are sufficient for it to hold it’s own among American offerings, assuming one watches foreign language films in the first place.

The second of the two, released in the U.S. as Kilo Two Bravo, tells the story of an incident that earned Corporal Mark Wright, posthumously, the George Cross for bravery. Of the three, it is the most true to the events as they happened. It is also not a combat movie, in the way the other two are; the story involves a unit of British soldiers who become trapped in an unmapped minefield.

Once again, it is a good film by any measure. It also provides a non-American view on the Afghan situation. In particular, the heroes of the day can be honored outside of patriotism that would accompany (for me) a similarly-conceived U.S. film.

Being a British film, it highlighted one unique aspect of viewing foreign films. In, for example, a Russian language movie, the language is not much of a barrier as I’m relying on the subtitles. In a U.K. film, there are none because it is in my own, native language. Sort of. Watching this film, I struggled to follow the dialog through the accents. In turn, it made it a little difficult to follow the different units – who was positioned where. It didn’t help that the unit designated Kilo Two Bravo remained “offscreen” throughout the film. I kept waiting for when they would show up.

Following the accents was not a problem for the third film, the one that I have just finished, Hyena Road. This provides a dramatic account of the construction of a road through Taliban controlled territory in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan.The construction of the road is real, as is the deployment of Canadian soldiers (whose accents render them indistinguishable from Americans) to provide defense for that construction.

Those accents, however, are one of the details that move this film from the docudrama realm into historical fiction. The soldiers portrayed in the film were members of the Royal 22nd Regiment, of called the Van Doos. That nickname is an anglicization of the unit’s designation in french, le Vingt-deuxième. It is a french-speaking unit, meaning the generic “North American” accents of the actors may have sounded too “American” for Canadian views.The acting was done primarily by Canadian actors, however, so it is “authentic” in that regard. The individuals portrayed are likely all fictional, although the name of the commanding general in the film, Rileman, is probably an anagram of the Canadian commander Brigadier General Milner.

I thought the film was excellent, primary for it’s portrayal of some of the details of asymmetric warfare in Afghanistan. Despite some complaints among critics about the story, I also found that compelling. It is also a demonstration that a big budget isn’t necessary to create an immersive, realistic war movie. Not to say the story doesn’t dramatize the situation. It does. But it is a film based in the real world, not in a world of Hollywoodized gun play.

A lower-budget (~$12.5 million Canadian) film has to make decisions on how to portray the story within their financial restrictions. The hazard is that “small world” problem I like to write about. By focusing on the actions of a single squad, a few officers, and the command posts, the sense of the wider operation can be easily portrayed without having to fill the screen with a multitude of actors.

All three of these films, and particularly the last, deserve a wider viewing than they (almost certainly) got. I don’t know what the viability of films released outside of the Hollywood machine really is, but I hope there is room for innovation from the smaller-budget, non-American side of this industry.